You claimed exercise would slow aging. It won't. It will make you feel better. It will enhance your chances of living a longer life. It will improve the quality of the life you do live. It will even make you look better. Those are all important things and worth the trouble. It just won't slow aging. You will still die withing the same range of normal people who don't exercise.

Back | Next JACKIE RICCIARDI/STAFFFerrell has taken years of shots to control her allergies. The mild and dry winter could aggravate them.

Back | Next JACKIE RICCIARDI/STAFFBrenda Ferrell gets a pulmonary function test at an Evans clinic. She said the pollen is affecting her health.

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“It has really been a tough winter,” she said in an exam room at Augusta Fam&shy;ily Allergy & Immunology on Tues&shy;day.

A warmer and drier winter could be leading to a worse-than-usual season for those with tree and grass allergies, experts said.

The Cli&shy;mate Prediction Center of the Na&shy;tion&shy;al Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad&shy;ministration announced last week that the La Nina weather pattern was ending this month and turning to a more neutral weather pattern.

La Nina tends to lead to warmer and drier weather in the Southeast, the center said.

The La Nina effect could persist for months, however, and has already resulted in a mild and dry winter in Georgia, said Nyasha Dunkley, the deputy state climatologist at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

“It was very mild, very warm and very dry,” she said – the third-driest winter on record.

The warmer weather can coax the trees to begin releasing pollen early and give an earlier start to the allergy season, Dunkley said.

“If that continues into the spring, it can also increase the pollen counts,” she said.

That appears to be happening now, said Dr. Dennis Ownby, the chief of allergy and immunology at Medical College of Georgia Hospital.

“We’re seeing a lot of people with red itchy eyes and stuffy noses already,” he said. “I would guess that it is going to be pretty intense for the next couple of months at least.”

The dry air can have a double-whammy effect, Ownby said.

“If we have a lot of rain, that does tend to pull pollen out of the air where, if it is very dry, pollen that is released tends to stay in circulation,” he said. And there might be more of it because of the drought.

“It seems that in a lot of plants when growth is not as good, that is when they are stressed; they produce more pollen, presumably to try to make sure they perpetuate themselves,” Ownby said.

Most of central and southern Georgia is in extreme drought, Dunkley said. All of that – an earlier and longer tree season, more heavily pollinating plants – adds up to bad news for allergy patients, Ownby said.

What is alarming to Dr. Vanitcha Pin&shy;tavorn, at Augusta Family Allergy, is the allergy patients who are showing up with asthma but haven’t had it before.

“It could be scary,” she said, if the higher pollen amounts are causing that.

Asthma symptoms can be subtle, such as a persistent cough or chest tightness, and patients who do not know they have asthma tend to underestimate the severity, Pintavorn said.

Her advice to patients is to seek help if they are struggling and “don’t wait to call the doctor in the morning.”

Calcium isotope fractionation during mineral formation has led to several applications of calcium isotopes. In particular, the 1997 observation by Skulan and DePaolo [9] that calcium minerals are isotopically lighter than the solutions from which the minerals precipitate is the basis of analogous applications in medicine and in paleooceanography. In animals with skeletons mineralized with calcium the calcium isotopic composition of soft tissues reflects the relative rate of formation and dissolution of skeletal mineral. In humans changes in the calcium isotopic composition of urine have been shown to be related to changes in bone mineral balance. When the rate of bone formation exceeds the rate of bone resorption, soft tissue 44Ca/40Ca rises. Soft tissue 44Ca/40Ca falls when bone resorption exceeds bone formation. Because of this relationship, calcium isotopic measurements of urine or blood may be useful in the early detection of metabolic bone diseases like osteoporosis. [10]

Metabolic syndrome doubles the rate of heart attacks and stroke, and hiked the rate of dying from any cause by one and a half times.

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it:

Is Your Life Worth Saving? Or Will You Allow Yourself to Become Another Statistic? Overview Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is a dangerous condition that is feeding the number one killer diseases of our modern society. Insulin resistance, raised blood pressure and blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol levels, some cancers, Alzheimer’s Disease and even male and female fertility problems are related to this disorder.

When you have Metabolic Syndrome or Syndrome X, your risk of heart disease and diabetes are increased by around 30 times. As obesity rates increase so to does the risk of Metabolic Syndrome. In the USA, one study found that 1/3 of both males and females in the 50 to 59 year age groups had MetS and in the 60 to 69 year old group this risk was even greater.

The good news is, this is a treatable disorder, that requires simple lifestyle and dietary changes to return your body to good health again.

I doubt it but I'm still confused about what point you're trying to make.

Are you trying to link disease incidence as a result of poor lifestyle choices as evidence of accelerated aging? That would be like linking plane crashes with aging. I certainly wouldn't recommend either. If you want to live a long and fruitful life I advise you avoid both but that won't slow aging.